


Operation: Black Reign

by shockfactor



Series: Operation: Legacy [1]
Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-04 17:52:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16351310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shockfactor/pseuds/shockfactor
Summary: Part 1 of Operation: LegacyFollow the escapees from the ADVENT Penal Detention Center, Maximum Security, Western Europe, aka "The Nutcracker" in their journey, from prison break, to joining the Resistance.Takes place 3 years before Operation: Go Home.





	Operation: Black Reign

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remi Duvalier recalls bits and pieces of his first meeting with XCOM, and reminisces about what it was like to lose everything.

_**"So, I don't know why you want to hear my story, but I suppose there's no harm in sharing it."**_  
  
_**"My name is Remi Duvalier. I'm a former UN Peacekeeper, and tattoo artist by trade, from the city of Ypres, in the country of Belgium. As of the time of writing, in 2035, I am 42 years young. I know, I don't look it. Regardless..."**_  
  
_**"I was a relatively happy child. Nothing really to cry about. My mothers were both very busy corporate women, which meant, even as a young boy, I had a lot of time to myself. While my mothers were busy in the burgeoning gay rights movement in Belgium, as well as, you know, taking care of me, I kind of just got into trouble, or went out looking for it. Didn't catch a record or anything, though, thank Christ. That came later."**_  
  
_**"You see, my degenerate ass had one goal in life- to live fast. Dying young wasn't in the picture, that shit's cliche. I was constantly chasing highs, shots, and asses throughout my teenage years, all while being the most spoiled fucking brat in the universe. Hell, up until the end of my primary schooling days, I had a reputation as a hellraiser. It wasn't until my final year that events led to me getting my shit together- specifically, my birth mother contracted ovarian cancer. I don't know what that really did for me other than make me feel shitty, but it put me on the straight and narrow for a while. I joined the military straight out of secondary, and my training platoon, upon graduation, was immediately carted off to the UN Peacekeepers for a year. That was... 2012."**_  
  
_**"I was deployed to South Sudan. There was a ton of localized violence at the time, coming to a head in what's called the 'Uror Massacre.' My unit was sent to South Sudan to aid in the efforts there, helping out refugees and aiding the wounded civilians in the wake of attacks. We officially arrived in August, and I served there until September of 2013, before being rotated back home for a few months. I volunteered again, and returned in  early April 2014."**_  
  
_**"I was stationed in Bor, at a UN Peacekeeping Mission base. There was a peaceful protest going on in front of the base at the time, and I was on line duty that day. Just watching it."**_  
  
_**"Then they started shooting. Some folks in the crowd dropped their signs, picked up AKs, and started shooting. We got lucky- there weren't any Peacekeeper casualties... mainly because they weren't aiming for us. They were just shooting civilians. That's all they ever did. I should sound more tore up about it, but after the 9th or 10th time you see it happen, you sort of just... stop worrying about it."**_  
  
_**"Towards the end of 2014, I was recalled to Belgium again. I mostly spent time with my mothers, picked up tattoo artistry, even considered opening up a parlor. Since I was in military reserve, I didn't really have to worry about needing money or healthcare. It was nice."**_  
  
_**"Then, 2015 came. And with it, the aliens."**_  
  
_**"If you'd have asked anyone else, well... 2015 seemed normal. Like any other year. The ball dropped in Times Square, there were fireworks the world over. Nothing special.  January passed without up until the 3rd. That's when we learned what was really going on. The UN did their best to keep it covered up, but when I was called up again and told to head to the train station, I knew something was very, very wrong. I assumed the situation in Sudan had gotten worse, and my platoon was redeploying. I was somewhat right- we were redeploying, alright."**_  
  
_**"To Germany. Rammstein Air Base. A joint NATO-United States base, the headquarters for all NATO air operations in Europe. The XTs attacked it as soon as they found it, tried to cripple our air power in spite of the fact that our aircraft were in every way inferior to theirs. Just spite, I suppose. Our mission was to reinforce the American ground element already at Rammstein and hold the Air Base until we were relieved."**_  
  
**"Between you and me? Relief wasn't coming."**  
  
"Most of my command was wiped out on contact. We weren't sure what to expect from the aliens, but we got an ass-whipping. I was wounded early on, shot in the hip, but I managed alright, and somehow avoided suffering any further wounds. By the time I got to the rendezvous on the north-central line, my platoon had been scattered, and it was just me and a handful of men. My CO was dead, and as the senior Sergeant, it was up to me to lead what was left of us. Problem was... we had to survive long enough to rendezvous."

 

* * *

 

"FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!"

Remi's aim snapped onto one of the alien midgets currently lining up a shot on an already wounded American soldier, whose comrade was too busy to realize the 'fuck fuck fuck'ing was the injured man's attempt to get his attention. His G36 barked, and just like that, the alien was down an oversized cranium.  
  
_"Fucks' sake, Remi!"_ Sergeant Martel's voice crackled over the radio, _"There's so goddamn many of them! They've got some kind of transport ship landed just outside of the perimeter, and they're unloading troops by the dozens!"_

"Aren't we supposed to have artillery support by now?" Remi shouted, whipping his head around angrily at the nearest American with any sort of CO's insignia, finding a Captain to bark at. "Yank! Where the fuck is your artillery!?"  
  
"I don't fucking know! Private Baker, get on the fucking radio!" The captain shouted, turning his head to another poor soul- the guy dragging the wounded gentleman, coincidentally.  
  
"I tried already, sir, I ain't gettin' shit!"  
  
"Monroe, Godwin, Sandusky! Front and center!"  
  
A trio of men ran over to the captain, one of whom was carrying a rather large, odd-looking weapon.  
  
"The fuck is that thing, Sandusky?"  
  
"It's a... laser rifle, sir! Some guys delivered these to Brigade HQ!"  
  
"You've gotta be... you got gypped!"  
  
"Sir, I'm telling you, I've been shooting this thing all day and it hasn't backfired once. I've killed 10 fuckin' X-Rays with this rifle."  
  
"Whatever, it better be fucking working! I need you three to link up with Lawler's squad, and head to Longbow's last known position, see if you can get me a sitrep on my artillery support, because that fucking UFO is kicking our collective, multinational ass!"  
  
"Got it, Cap!"  
  
The three ran off, leaving Remi with the captain, who was now looking at him. "Alright, Frenchie-"  
  
"I'm Belgian, you fucking ignoramus."  
  
"You're all fucking French to me. How many men you got?"  
  
"4. You?"  
  
"We're cut off from the rest of the brigade. I've got 15 men, not counting the team I just sent out. I've got exactly one Abrams tank dug in inside a parking garage to keep it out of the UFO's sight, two mortars, and a knocked out Bradley IFV that can't move anything but the turret and the main gun."  
  
"At least you've got fucking armor. So, what's the plan?"  
  
"We're gonna keep holding this line. If the artillery's out of commission, we have no fallback line, and we're trapped between a rock-hard, pulsating alien cock and a hard place. If this line collapses, the X-Rays have a straight shot to our FOC, and we're just all fucked."  
  
"Right. My men and I will do what we can, but it's certainly looking bleak."  
  
"You're telling me. We're all fucking dead, Frenchie." The captain sighed, reloading his rifle as he looked at his watch. "0300 hours. Hey, what's your name?"  
  
"Sergeant Remi Duvalier, Eurocorps."  
  
"I'm Captain Chris Holly, 12th CAB.  Good luck, Sergeant."  
  
With that, the Captain went back over the line, already shouting orders. "WINSTON! UNFUCK YOURSELF!"  
  
Remi wondered where the hell the Americans got off, acting like everything was a war movie. They seemed to take war in stride, as if it wasn't any major thing. Considering that this was, pretty much, the end of the world, Remi saw no reason NOT to take it seriously.  
  
_"Sergeant Duvalier! I've got a MASSIVE hostile unit disembarking!"_ Private Lévêque cried.  _" Some kind of big aliens in green armor, and... my god, is that some kind of tank?"_  
  
"Get to the line, Christian, we're going to make our stand here. Fireteam, form up on me, make it snappy!"

* * *

_**"That was the first time we'd seen Mutons. Or Sectopods. I'd hoped it would be the last. I knew better."** _

_**"Normally, I'm not a fan of how the Americans operate, but when the XTs hit the line... they put their balls to the wall. The tank got knocked out almost immediately by the walker, but the Bradley still had TOW missiles. It somehow managed to knock that walker out of commission before getting polished off by the Mutons. With the Sectopod taken out, holding the line was a bloodbath, but it was doable, and do it we did. Unfortunately... there wasn't many of us left to keep holding it."  
** _

 

* * *

"Sergeant Duvalier! Help me move her out of the line of fire!"  
  
Captain Holly had become something of an unlikely friend in fire to Remi over the past hour of slugging it out with the aliens, as the two seemed to be able to rally around each other admirably. In this case, he was helping the poor man unload an obviously dying young woman out of the scorched wreckage of the Abrams tank that had gone down swinging against that walker tank. Badasses, the lot of them. The woman's legs were charred black up to the inner thigh, and the left leg was basically hanging on by some meaty strings, and her face was an ashen pale, as if she'd been filmed in monochrome compared to the rest of the world.  
  
"Mind the leg, will ya, French?"  
  
Remi nodded, grabbing the woman around the waist and hoisting her up. "Got her."  
  
"Alright, come on."  
  
The two walked the woman along to a little dugout inside the blown out wall of a building, just as Monroe and Sandusky returned from their excursion, the latter limping heavily on an obviously injured leg.  
  
"What the hell happened to you two?" he asked, before turning his attention to Remi. "Set her down here, we'll get the medic."  
  
"Artillery's fucking gone, Cap," Monroe responded, out of breath. "We lost Godwin and most of Lawler's squad. Kent, Dubois and Pierce are back on the line, but Eagles and Conrad are wounded."  
  
"Shit. SHIT! FUCKIN' SHIT!"  
  
Remi watched the dying woman with an odd sense of envy as she watched her CO explode, throwing his helmet at the wall and running his fists through greying blonde hair. Monroe walked over to the woman, and knelt down next to her, offering her a sad smile that didn't really go past the corners of his mouth, which she didn't respond to. She'd already gone into shock. Thierry stumbled in through the hole, blood pouring down the right side of his face as he fell to one knee, motioning to one of the Americans. "Up. Need help. Up."  
  
Sandusky grabbed him beneath one arm and hoisted him up, which drew Remi's attention to his wounded second. "Holy shit, Thierry."  
  
"I'm gonna be fine. Just fell off my spot. Alien air strikes. They just breached the eastern line."  
  
"Sacredamn. What about the central line?"  
  
"Barely holding."  
  
"Far east?"  
  
"They surrendered, sir."  
  
"What about the other side of us? Far western section."  
  
"I don't know. I don't see any signs of enemy activity, but there's no contact from them."  
  
"Sir! There's an unidentified aircraft approaching!" Lévêque shouted from outside, first in French, then in English, to make it absolutely clear to everyone that he was panicking like a motherfucker. Remi ran to the door like a sprinter, with Holly, and Sandusky right behind. Sure enough, this bulky monstrosity of an aircraft was landing within their fucking line, with no clearance, no contact, and an insignia that nobody recognized.   
  
"Oh my FUCKING GOD," Holly shouted, raising his rifle and aiming at the cockpit. "ATTENTION, RETARD! IDENTIFY YOURSELF BEFORE I LIGHT YOU UP!"  
  
"Hold on," Remi grabbed the barrel of the man's M4, pushing it down. "This is a human aircraft. Maybe it's relief."  
  
The door on the back of the aircraft opened with a hydraulic hiss, and a group of shadowed figures exited the craft, six total. Sandusky aimed down the barrel of his laser rifle, obviously every bit as paranoid as his superior, while Lévêque just seemed resigned to be killed if he was going to be killed by said shadowy figures. Once they came into the light, though? They were obviously human. One of them was a large Hispanic man with a mohawk, another blonde with dull blue eyes and a really scrappy beard, a gentleman with close-shorn brown hair and a laser rifle similar to Sandusky's own, an African woman with another rifle, and two gentlemen, once African, one Asian, with compact weapons that glowed a fiery red. They all wore bulky, metallic armor with a bluish-black finish.  
  
"Excuzes-moi, what the fuck?" Lévêque asked, and Sandusky next to him lowered his weapon.  
  
"Uh, shit, Cap, what's the sign?"  
  
"Disco."  
  
"Disco!" Sandusky shouted.  
  
"Don't shoot my ass!" Brown Hair shouted, grinning ear to ear. "XCOM has come with the gift of ass-whoopin' for any X-Ray motherfucker in a ten mile radius!"

* * *

 

 _**"That was my first meeting with XCOM. At the beginning of the war, they were a completely clandestine organization= no one outside of the highest levels of military and government knew they existed. As the war got worse, however, they weren't trying to hide it anymore. They were the best hope humanity had- the XTs knew it, humanity knew it, XCOM knew it."**_  
  
" ** _It was also the first time I met Adam Jones. Yeah, the blonde? That was him, back when he was in his late 20s. He wasn't traumatized back then, either. In fact, he was a cocky son of a bitch back then. I hated his guts, honestly. Brown Hair? That was Ezekiel Collins, another guy I got to know to a very limited extent, although, you probably knew that if you're listening to this."_**  
  
**_"Regardless, XCOM had been sent to rescue a VIP, specifically, a scientist by the name of  Ernst Breckenwalt, who had been studying alien weaponry. Unfortunately, by the time they got to Germany, he was fucking dead. So, they decided that they'd already wasted gas, why not stay a while? Thusly, they were about to help us punch out aliens, but... that's another story for another time. What matters is once they'd helped us fend off a few enemy attack waves, they left. By then, there wasn't anybody hardly left standing._**  
  
**_"Thierry bled to death from that head wound. I found him laid out over his sniper rifle. I assumed he was still alive and just didn't have any targets, had to basically kick him to realize he'd gone. Lévêque shot himself. Jordan deserted, can't blame him. Never found out what happened to Girard. Last I heard, he was still running ammo. "_**

**_"Yeah, he's dead."_ **

_**"So is Holly. He was killed during the fighting, got in a fistfight with a Muton. Got his arm ripped off. Godspeed, Yank. Sandusky, believe it or not, is still alive. In fact, he ended up joining the Resistance, some band of survivalists in the abandoned cities. I've seen him around the Avenger. It's pretty nice to have a friendly face from that far back."**_  
  
_**"Anyways, we lost the battle for Rammstein. About a week after this happened, we pulled out, and my unit, or what was left of it, returned to Belgium to help the regular infantry. Like most of Eurocorp, we withdrew from the war effort in late 2015. For Belgium, it was Christmas Day. The Aliens didn't raze anything they hadn't already burnt to the ground, but... it was definitely not ideal."**_  
  
_**"You know, I would love to talk more, but... I'm not really enjoying this little storytime session. If you want to know more about what happened after that, ask some of the other guys from Assassin. They'll tell you their side of things. Maybe later I'll be up to it."**_


End file.
